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Mr Morrison, the former immigration minister, defended Mr Dutton when pressed on the issue.

“I don’t think that was the case at all. What we’ve simply said is that the officers who are part of Operation Sovereign Borders have always operated lawfully, that has always been my experience. We always conduct ourselves lawfully,” he said.

“I’m used to people making allegations in this area.

“We’ve run a very tight operation, it’s stopped the boats. That’s what the Australian public asked of us and that’s what we’ve delivered,” he said.

Labor has backed away from its initial attack on the government over the alleged payments after claims emerged that Australian officials had paid US $30,000 to five asylum seeker boat crew members to turn back to Indonesia.

The payments were allegedly made when Labor was in power.

On Tuesday the opposition refused to answer questions about the issue in the lower house.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Labor governments never paid people smugglers to turn boats around, but refused to say whether the practice was used on land in Indonesia.

"Labor has never paid people smugglers to turn back boats as it appears the government has done," he said.

"If you are going to security matters about what happens elsewhere ... we simply don't comment."